Long before the novel coronavirus could wreak havoc in 2020, infecting millions and killing lakhs globally, the first coronavirus strain was discovered by June Almeida in 1964.

Almeida was born in Glasgow in 1930 as June Hart. She was the daughter of a bus driver and left formal schooling at age 16 before getting a job as a histopathology laboratory technician at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

She was the first to visualize the rubella virus with immune electron microscopy, a method she pioneered which made it possible for viruses to be seen clumped by antibody.

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The method also led Almeida to discover that the hepatitis B virus has two components, one on the particle’s surface and one internally.

Doctors, who had heard of her extraordinary skills, sent a researcher a sample from the nasal swabs of a pupil of a boarding school in Surrey, who later became known as B814. They suspected they had encountered a whole new type of virus.

June, who was able to show viruses from the samples with antibodies, gave them the truth. She took images of viral particles that were similar to influenza but had remarkable protuberances. She remembered that she had seen such viruses before in animals – mice and chickens.

Almeida’s discovery was rejected as a case of ‘just bad pictures of influenza virus particles’ at the time.

While working as a technician, Almeida developed a methodology that allowed better visualisation of viruses once they have been aggregated using antibodies. Hailed for her work, Almeida was invited to join the St Thomas Hospital Medical School in London, in 1964.

The specimen would become known as the first human coronavirus. The discovery was published in the British Medical Journal (now the BMJ) in 1965. However, the first photos of the coronavirus were published two years later in the Journal of General Virology.

The Chinese used her procedures to identify a new coronavirus. They actually repeated how June proceeded in 1964,” Professor Pennington said. “Without her we would never have gone that far.”

“She was undoubtedly one of the most important Scottish scientists of her generation. It is sad that she has been forgotten. Ironically, she is only remembered with COVID thirteen years after her death,” said June Almeida associate.

Almeida died in December 2007 at age 77, the Herald reported. But thirteen years after her death, her work is helping researchers fight the novel coronavirus.

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